Updated Study Indicates Five Billion Dollars in Costs if System Maintained
Monday’s ruling by Los Angeles Superior Court Judge Larry Fidler simply acknowledged the current state of affairs, as he was asked by LA County prosecutors to allow the execution of two longtime death row inmates, both of whom exhausted their legal appeals.
Judge Fidler agreed with the prosecution who argued that the “state is going as slow as they can and calling it progress.” However, he said that as a trial judge, he lacked “the authority to override a civil court order in Marin County or the California State Legislature’s direction that a long administrative process is necessary to vet any lethal injection method.”
On the other hand, according to local new coverage, “Attorneys for the inmates argued that the process is lengthy and arduous because it needs to be.”
“I see why the state wants to take its time,” said Attorney John Grele. “Because they did it so abysmally wrong the first time.”
In the end, it will largely depend on the will of the voters who get to decide in November whether to end the death penalty in California.
“If they set aside the death penalty, that’s it,” Judge Fidler said. “But if they don’t, at some point, those who’ve been duly tried will have to face the will of the people. At some point, this will have to be done in an efficient manner.”
Los Angeles County could decide to pursue the cases in civil court and sue the prison system and the state in order to execute these individuals.
In the meantime, Jeanne Woodford, a former warden at San Quentin and one of the leaders of the Proposition 34 campaign that is seeking to end the death penalty, sees this as simply more evidence that the system is broken.
“Today’s ruling shows, once again, that California’s death penalty is broken beyond repair,” she said in a statement. “Los Angeles District Attorney Steve Cooley’s motion was found by the judge to be baseless and it is one more example of a waste of tax dollars. Instead of adding to the waste of California taxpayers’ funds, Mr. Cooley and others would do better in supporting measures to prevent crime and deliver justice that works, for everyone.”
She argued, “A Yes on 34 vote will replace the death penalty with life in prison without possibility of parole. It will improve public safety and save the state hundreds of millions of dollars now squandered on special death row housing and life-long legal counsel and court proceedings. Meanwhile, most death row inmates die of old age and natural causes.”
Proponents for the measure have heavily pushed the fiscal aspect of the death penalty.
Ms. Woodford yesterday argued, “Our tax dollars can be better used to provide full enforcement of the law, by increasing funding for homicide and rape investigations at a time when 46% of murders and 56% of reported rapes in California remain unsolved every year, on average. And by requiring every person convicted of murder to work and pay restitution into a victim’s compensation fund, we hold criminals accountable.”
In the meantime, proponents of the measure cited the publication of an update on the death penalty costs in California by the Loyola Law Review, co-authored by Federal Judge Arthur Alarcón and Loyola Law Professor Paula Mitchell.
According to updated figures, if the current death penalty system is maintained: “Californians will spend an additional $5 billion to $7 billion over the cost of life in prison without parole between now and 2050.”
Judge Alarcón and Professor Mitchell write: “In that time, roughly 740 more inmates will be added to death row, an additional fourteen executions will be carried out, and more than five hundred death-row inmates will die of old age or other causes before the state executes them.”
They argue, “California’s costly and ineffective death-penalty system was created largely by the state legislature’s failure to take any steps over the last three decades to eliminate unnecessary and wasteful delay and to reform the system.”
Senator Loni Hancock’s 2011 legislation is the basis of Proposition 34. She argued, “Capital punishment is an expensive failure and an example of the dysfunction of our prisons. California’s death row is the largest and most costly in the United States. It is not helping to protect our state; it is helping to bankrupt us.”
She added, “Today we’re not tough on crime; we’re tough on the taxpayer. Every time we spend money on failed policies like the death penalty, we drain money from having more police officers on the street, more job training, more education, more of the things that would truly make for safer communities.”
On the other hand, supporters of the death penalty, such as “Cory Salzillo, the Director of Legislation for California District Attorneys’ Association, testified that eliminating the death penalty would result in added costs because, unless prosecutors can use the threat of the death penalty to secure guilty pleas from defendants, no defendant will ever plead guilty to murder but will instead insist on going to trial, which Salzillo claimed would be costly to the state.”
That seems a bit alarmist, as we know that many will accept life with the possibility of parole in the face of a possibility of LWOP.
Ms. Woodford concluded, “California voters have an historic opportunity this November to prevent the waste of that $5-7 billion, and to use the money to catch more murderers and rapists instead, in order to keep our families and communities safe.”
—David M. Greenwald
Capital punishment is an expensive failure and an example of the dysfunction of our prisons. California’s death row is the largest and most costly in the United States. It is not helping to protect our state; it is helping to bankrupt us.”
Yes, financially and morally.
“Today we’re not tough on crime; we’re tough on the taxpayer. Every time we spend money on failed policies like the death penalty, we drain money from having more police officers on the street, more job training, more education, more of the things that would truly make for safer communities.”
Failed policies are definitely bankrupting this state. The criminal justice system is a big part of these failed policies that are costing the taxpayer a tremendous amount of money.